by Bryan Murray
He pushed the old, creaky door back and drove in. He took the GPS and the coffee and muffins with him, closed the door to the barn and headed back towards the main road.
By his rough calculations, he was probably about a couple of miles from the canal where he had left Sarah. It was still almost dark as he walked along the road, with the bag containing the coffee and muffins in his hand and the GPS in his pocket. He was startled when suddenly, around the bend ahead, two police cars with lights flashing came screaming towards and past him, back in the direction of the coffee shop.
Jake froze momentarily before realizing that somehow he had been spotted and MI5 were already on the scene. He carried on walking nonchalantly towards and past the two approaching cars and the second they had passed him Jake jumped across the ditch at the side of the road, over a fence forcing his way through some bushes and he was already sprinting as fast as he could go across a grassy field.
Inside the first police car, Fred, the driver, suddenly looked at his partner after passing Jake on the road and it registered with both of them what had just happened.
“Shit!” Fred screamed and he jumped on the brakes causing the car behind to bump into the back of them as both cars crunched to a halt. The two men in the second car, who had been driving too close to the first car to get a close look at Jake, jumped out angrily, screaming at their colleagues in the first car who were now scrambling out.
“What the fuck are you doin’?” Bill, the driver of the second car screamed.
Fred was already dusting himself off and heading for the ditch. “That was him, you arsehole!” he screamed, waving them to follow him.
“Who’s him?” Bill screamed back.
“The fugitive! C’mon, let’s get after him!” The other three policemen dusted themselves off and started to follow Fred across the ditch and through the hedge in the half light.
Stumbling along, Bill was already breathless. “I don’t see shit, are you sure, Fred?”
Fred was still waving them on. “I saw him with my own eyes, this is our collar!” Dave his partner nodded in agreement. “Me too. A guy on his own carryin’ a paper bag!”
They carried on rushing, luckily for Jake in the wrong direction, and over to the left, Jake was already another field ahead of them, his lungs bursting, but obviously in better shape than the local police who were pursuing him and lagging further behind. Jake’s sense of direction was working well and he continued to head east in the direction of the sunrise, knowing that the canal had been east of the coffee shop he had stopped at.
He was now cursing himself for breaking cover just to try and give Sarah at least a surprise for breakfast and the bag he was still holding in his hand as he ran along, was now probably a soggy mix of coffee and muffins.
* * *
About half a mile away from Jake, the exhausted cops were kicking themselves that they had not spotted the direction that Jake had taken, but more so for the fact that in their haste and excitement to get after him, they had left their intercoms still plugged in back at the now smoking police cars.
“Damn it!” Fred screamed. “C’mon let’s get back to the car, let everyone know where we saw this bastard!”
The others were still bent over catching their breath. “Give us a second, okay?” Bill gasped as they all made their way dejectedly back towards their cars.
* * *
Jake continued to push ahead keeping close to the hedgerows until he suddenly saw what he was looking for. Across the flat countryside, the sun was now providing more visibility and he saw the tell-tale hump of a bridge, one that he was hoping would be going over the canal. He increased his pace and found out as he got closer that it was a bridge over a railroad track, but fortunately a rail track that was running parallel to the canal that was just beyond it, a rail track they had not noticed when they arrived at the barge in the darkness.
He rushed over the rail bridge down the quiet road until he came to the canal bridge where he went down the steps and rushed along the towpath in the direction of the barge and Sarah.
* * *
Back at the damaged police cars, Fred and Bill were being chewed out by their supervisor on the intercom.
“What kind of morons are you?” the supervisor screamed. “You lost us vital minutes in closing in on this guy and now we don’t know if he went north, east, south or west. I don’t bloody well believe this. Get to the coffee shop and get the details on this guy, now!”
Bill added sheepishly. “There’s a slight problem, sir.”
“Like what?” the supervisor screamed.
“Both cars are immobilized, sir.”
“Immobilized?”
“Yes, sir,” Bill replied. “We stopped too fast and bumped into the back of the other car!”
“Morons, that’s what you are!” the supervisor screamed. “Well, you’d better start running. I’ll send a car to collect you!” the line went dead.
Bill and Fred looked at each other sheepishly.
* * *
Sarah was now getting nervous back at the barge. It was well over an hour since Jake had left and she was worried that he had been spotted. She put on her jacket, ready for a quick getaway when suddenly, the door of the barge opened and Jake staggered in breathlessly.
Sarah looked at him in shock. “My God! Where have you been?” she looked at the paper bag still in his hand.
“I screwed up,” he gasped. “Took a chance to get us a coffee and muffins and must’ve been spotted. Before I knew it cops were everywhere and I had to run like hell to get away.”
“So, what do we do now?” she asked
Jake had been thinking hard. “We haul ass, forget the car, there’ll be road blocks everywhere in minutes.”
“So, what do we do?” she looked desperate.
“There’s a railway track runs parallel with the canal, about 50 yards away.”
She looked at him incredulously. “What d’you have in mind?”
“Well, we can forget the roads and the car, but they probably won’t put road blocks on the tracks unless there’s a railroad crossing.”
“You mean we jump on a train zooming past?”
He gave a wry smile. “Something like that!”
She shuddered. “I don’t believe this. We’d better go.”
He nodded. “You got that part right!”
They quickly left the barge, but before Jake left he put a twenty pound note on the table, a tactful payment for their short stay, but in their haste they forgot the ‘Cindy’s’ brown bag with the lukewarm coffee and soggy muffins!
It was now almost full daylight as they kept low, sprinting along the hedgerows until they reached the railway line. Jake quickly checked the GPS in his pocket and decided on the direction they needed to go to get away from his previous confrontation.
Within minutes of lung bursting sprinting, they heard the noise of the first train approaching as Jake put his hand on Sarah’s arm to stop her and hide in the bushes at the side of the track, but the local passenger train was going too fast and in the wrong direction.
As soon as it passed, they continued their way along the tracks and shortly thereafter another train approached going in the right direction, but it was also a passenger train going much too fast.
They continued for another half mile or so until Jake heard another train coming up behind them. This was a slower-moving freight train with both open and closed wagons with sliding doors.
Jake looked at Sarah as they stopped to catch their breath. “Are you ready for this?” he gasped.
“Ready for what?” she gasped in return.
“We let it get level and then break from cover. The first wagon we see with an open door, I’ll boost you in first and then follow you. Okay?”
She looked at him nervously. “If you say so.”
The train approached and they both stayed under cover behind some trees until the engine went past and when they spotted an empty wagon with the door open. Jake suddenly
shouted to Sarah. “Okay, let’s go!”
They broke from cover, rushed alongside the train and Jake helped Sarah to scramble on board, but by the time he did, the wagon was getting away from him.
Sarah looked back and screamed. “Jake! Jake!”
Jake carried on running and just managed to grab onto the next wagon, his lungs bursting as he climbed onto the side of the wagon, working his way along to the sliding door in the middle, but it was locked.
He hung on until he got his breath back and then he climbed up the side of the wagon and onto the roof. He looked ahead and saw a tunnel approaching with what looked like very little headroom above the wagons. He scrambled along the covered wagon that he was on until he was at the space between his wagon and the one that Sarah was in and with seconds to spare before the train went into the tunnel, he ducked down between the two wagons before being enveloped in darkness.
In about twenty seconds he re-emerged into daylight and quickly climbed over to the top of the wagon that Sarah was in and edged on his stomach towards the side where the door was located. He leaned over and checked that the door was still open as he prepared to swing himself outwards and loop down and inwards into the opening.
He looked up ahead and saw a signal post on the side of the track getting closer as they approached and he waited until they had passed it before swinging out and under, just like a trapeze artist would do after they land in the net at the end of the act and grab the edge of the net before lowering themselves to the ground.
There was just one slight problem. Jake was no trapeze artist, but his move worked as he fell a little clumsily into the open doorway and onto the floor inside the carriage as Sarah looked up in shock.
“Thank God!” she screamed as she helped Jake up from the floor.
He smiled at her. “Didn’t think you’d lose me that easily, did you?”
She hugged him to her in relief. “So, now we can add hobo train hopping to our long list of accomplishments?”
“Looks like it,” he grinned as he grabbed his GPS and clicked it on. He looked at the screen getting his bearings. “Looks like there’s a station about 15 miles ahead, so, knowing these MI5 guys, they’ll probably have it staked out and maybe even stop and search the train.”
She nodded in agreement. “I agree, so what do we do?”
Jake looked at the GPS again. “Looks like there’s a bend about a couple of miles from the station where this train will have to slow down.”
She was ahead of him. “And that’s where we do our death-defying leap to safety?”
He grinned. “You’re really getting’ into this, aren’t you?”
They settled down to catch their breath and Jake was still thinking out loud. “With luck, we should be outside the roadblock area, so once we get off the train, we move fast until.....”
She finished the sentence for him. “We can steal another car, right?”
“Exactly, but where we head for I’ve no idea until I can talk to Gramps,” he looked at her apologetically. “All this because I thought you’d like a coffee and a muffin!”
“That’s still sitting in the barge,” she smiled. “Never mind, it’s the thought that counts!”
CHAPTER 13
The MI5 team were now at the coffee shop in force still questioning Cindy and Geoff, who had spotted Jake’s car as he was leaving. The new vehicle search ID had gone out and luckily for Jake and Sarah, the car was now sitting in a deserted barn, just a couple of miles away. That would at least buy them a little time.
* * *
In Thames House, Hargreaves was tearing his hair out that Jake and Sarah had slipped through the dragnet once again. He screamed at Strickland. “This damned fellow did it to us again and as for those four cretins who bumped into each other and then lost them, I’m speechless!”
What was about to complicate the Senior Civil Servant’s day even more, was that shortly after Jake and Sarah had left the barge, the owners of the barge had arrived back to find the door unlocked and a ‘Cindy’s’ brown bag containing coffee and soggy muffins on the table together with a twenty pound note.
The second they called 999 to report the break-in and mentioned the name of the coffee shop, the local MI5 boys were on it like a flash. They arrived at the barge within minutes, deduced that this was where Jake and Sarah had been hiding out and also put two and two together, guessing they must have hitched a train ride from the tracks nearby. A quick scan of the schedules in the time frame it happened, showed a freight train had passed heading north and the station ahead on the tracks had already been alerted to stop the train.
* * *
The freight train started to slow down as it came to the large, looping bend, which according to Jake’s GPS was about a couple of miles from the station ahead. Jake was watching the side of the track for a suitable jumping off spot, a nervous Sarah at his side.
Up ahead, he saw a bridge over the track where the tall grassy embankment sloped down from the road above to the train track, making it less distance from the elevated train deck to solid ground.
He motioned to Sarah. “Okay, this is it coming up. When I say go, we hold hands, jump together and land facing inwards in the tall grass, so we can grab at anything strong enough to stop us from slipping back.”
She looked at him. “Piece of cake...not! Okay, ready when you are.”
Jake looked closely and decided on a suitable spot. “Okay, one, two, three, go!”
They both jumped out holding hands and grabbed at the grassy slope that both cushioned their landing and stopped them from falling back towards the train. They hung onto the bank and to each other as the train moved on. Jake looked at her. “You okay?”
She nodded. “As soon as my heart starts beating again!”
Jake was looking around, getting their bearings. “Okay, we’ll head up to the road above when the cost is clear and check out the prospects.”
“You mean select the next poor sucker who’s goin’ to donate his wheels to our worthy cause?”
“Exactly!”
* * *
When the freight train neared the station ahead, the Driver looked ahead to see the signal against him and he slowed to a stop. Within seconds, armed Special Branch personnel swarmed out of the station and down each side of the train. The Driver looked ahead. “What the heck?”
Seconds later an armed Operative climbed into his control cabin.
“What’s goin’ on?” the Driver asked.
“Special Branch, we need to search the train, sir,” the Operative replied. “Did you see any unwanted passengers trying to get aboard?”
“Unwanted passengers?”
“Yes, sir. We’re tracking the two fugitives who were involved in the attempted assassination of Her Majesty the Queen!”
The Driver’s eyes went wide open. “Well, I haven’t seen anything unusual, officer, but you’re welcome to search the train.”
The Operative wasn’t waiting for permission. “It’s already being done, so don’t even think of moving off until I say so, is that clear?”
“I guess.” The Driver shrugged.
* * *
Strickland was quick to report to Hargreaves that they were checking to see if Jake and Sarah may have hopped a train. Little did they know how close they were? It was small consolation that following up on the call from the barge owner, Cindy at the coffee shop had confirmed that the contents of the paper bag were exactly what Jake had ordered and she was now having her moment of fame as she was explaining it to the local TV reporter, much to the undoubted chagrin of John Hargreaves.
* * *
Jake marvelled at the unique, trusting innocence of the Brits when it came to the lack of security when making short trips in their cars. In Washington DC, even if you only drove a block from home to the convenience store, the first thing you did before leaving the car would be to double check the doors were locked.
Jake and Sarah walked from the railway bridge where they had discreetl
y merged onto the road above leading into the small town. Nobody gave them a second glance as they walked towards the town center.
They were approaching the parking lot of a small bank when another trusting Brit, a woman around thirty five, pulled up in her car, got out still talking on her cell phone and didn’t do a thing to lock her car before she walked into the bank.
Jake’s alert eyes spotted the opportunity and he quickly whispered to Sarah. “Okay, beige beamer, keep watching while I get her going!”
“Get her going?” she asked nervously.
“Yes, didn’t I tell you, hot wiring is one of my specialties?”
She shrugged. “They teach that at Boy Scout Camp as well?”
“Absolutely, here we go!”
They both walked over to the car, Jake got behind the wheel and Sarah slid in the other side, anxiously watching the door of the bank for the woman coming out. Within seconds, Jake had the car running and they cruised slowly out of the parking lot onto the road.
Inside the bank, the Clerk was watching through the window as the owner of the car was filling out a deposit form.
“That’s odd!” the Clerk looked surprised. “Isn’t that your car out there, Betty?” she asked the owner of the car.
Betty looked up. “Yes, why?”
“Because someone just drove it off the parking area!” the Clerk replied.
Betty was instantly alarmed. “You’re joking!” she rushed to the window and turned back to the Clerk. “Call the police, I don’t believe this!”
* * *
Minutes later, Strickland had already briefed Hargreaves.
“Too much of a coincidence, Hugh,” Hargreaves replied. “A car stolen just miles from where we stopped the freight train. My God, this chap’s good! He must have jumped off the train before it got to the station. You know the drill?”
“Yes, sir,” Strickland replied wearily. “More roadblocks!”
“Exactly.” Hargreaves rang off.
* * *
Driving along in the BMW, Jake had already checked to see they had almost a full tank of gas and there was also a couple of candy bars in the cup holder slots between the driver and passenger seats. They were both munching on them hungrily.
